It is often these several types of relationships that truly provide solid support for female entrepreneurs.
As a female entrepreneur, do you go through such daily routines: your daytime hours are fragmented by all kinds of affairs, and at night you have to pick up all the unfinished decisions one by one. You know you can't completely put down everything, but the more it is like this, the easier it is to take "I have to hold on by myself" as a default setting, especially when entrepreneurship, family responsibilities and external expectations come at the same time.
Yet entrepreneurship is never a single-player challenge. A person will certainly make decisions and take corresponding results, and must move forward at critical moments. What really determines the sustainability of an entrepreneurial journey is often not just the willpower of the founder. The Female Entrepreneurs and Physical and Mental Health report released this year by the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at King's College London puts forward an important perspective: the achievements of female entrepreneurs are significantly relational — they are closely connected with relationships with family, friends, peers and other stakeholders.
Who can process your problems and emotions?
Entrepreneurship is often imagined as a freer way of working: you can arrange your own time, choose your own location, and decide your own pace. But "flexible arrangement" does not mean that pressure disappears automatically.
The report puts forward the concept of entrepreneurial care penalty: actual or expected family demands may undermine female entrepreneurs' performance. The apparent autonomy over time sometimes tangles work and family responsibilities even more closely — because entrepreneurs seem to be "able to coordinate", the responsibility of coordination is more likely to fall on them.
Family responsibilities do not only refer to a quantifiable housework or family activity arrangement. They also include constant time switching, emotional concerns, reserved space for emergencies, and those hidden labors that are not easy to be listed in the to-do list but always occupy mental energy. When these responsibilities are superimposed with continuous efforts in financing, delivery, recruitment, customer relationship maintenance and demonstration of professional credibility, time pressure and capital pressure may amplify each other.
The report points out that instrumental support (such as lending a hand with chores) and emotional support (such as listening) from partners and family members are important entrepreneurial resources; on the contrary, lack of support, conflicts between family responsibilities and work will undermine entrepreneurship. The so-called instrumental support does not just mean "understanding that you are busy", but being able to participate in specific division of labor: who is responsible for handling temporary family affairs, who takes a certain period of stable responsibility, which things can be completed by others, and which time no longer defaults to making concessions to work.
The most powerful part of the support from partners and family members is not to solve all problems for you, but to eliminate the assumption that "I can only rely on myself".
You can arrange uninterrupted working hours, and set aside time for rest and family that cannot be easily diverted; you can turn temporary requests into negotiable division of labor instead of silently taking them on; you can also state your needs in advance at important nodes, instead of explaining why you can't do it after you are exhausted. Setting boundaries is not rejecting responsibilities, but preventing responsibilities from expanding infinitely. It is not something that can be completed with one conversation or one schedule, but more like continuous calibration of the default rules in relationships: what needs to be shared together, and what should not be quietly digested by a single person.
In addition, entrepreneurs are often encouraged to build social connections. But if peer relationships are only understood as exchanging business cards, looking for resources and seizing opportunities, you will underestimate their real value.
In the process of entrepreneurship, many difficulties are not "without answers", but you cannot judge whether the problem you are facing is an individual problem, a phased problem, or a more common structural challenge. At this time, real feedback from peers is particularly precious. It does not have to be encouragement, nor does it always have to resonate. Good feedback sometimes means that someone is willing to point out logical loopholes, someone can provide different experience references, and someone lets you know that a certain anxiety does not only happen to you. It can not only help entrepreneurs calibrate their judgments, but also reduce the sense of isolation that "you must always look certain". What's more, being able to get real feedback is itself a kind of operational capability.
But "seeking support" does not mean handing over all your emotions and problems to your peers. Every relationship has its capacity, and everyone has their own work and life. More sustainable connections are usually not one-way taking or one-way giving, but a clear understanding of what each other can provide and what cannot be provided for the time being.
Empowerment is not loss of control, and giving back is not an extra burden
Many entrepreneurs have mixed feelings about authorization. On the one hand, there are too many things, and they know rationally that it is impossible to finish all of them in person; on the other hand, the founder knows the business best, and is most likely to worry about declining standards, distorted information, or deviations at critical moments.
The report summarizes five types of active practices for female entrepreneurs to improve entrepreneurial efficiency: introspection, self-improvement, re-acquiring or mobilizing resources, empowerment, and balance. Among them, "empowerment" includes building relationships with trusted employees, delegating authority and sharing responsibilities to reduce pressure.
Delegating authority is not simply throwing things out, nor does it mean that the founder no longer cares about the results. It is more close to an organizational capability: clarifying what must be judged by yourself and what can be taken charge of by the team; giving sufficiently clear directions and authorities; allowing members to grow within a tolerable range; and leaving space for necessary reviews. When the founder no longer defaults that he must fill every vacancy, team members will have the opportunity to truly take responsibilities.
The evidence in the report also shows that good enterprise performance, entrepreneurial sustainability and personal agency are correlated. Although delegation costs, building trust takes time, cultivating capabilities requires patience, and redesigning processes may not be immediately faster than doing it personally. But if all key affairs can only be undertaken by one person, short-term efficiency can easily turn into long-term vulnerability.
When starting a business, many opportunities often come from someone opening a door for you. This action looks light, but the actual threshold is very high. It means that someone vouches for you with their own reputation, and vouching is usually not a casual favor, but comes with costs. So this door usually does not open automatically. One interviewee mentioned that learning new AI skills helped her win trust, brought cooperation opportunities, and even got project funding as a result — capability comes first, then trust, and finally resources.
The report also mentions the actions after the door is opened. Many female entrepreneurs, after getting opportunities, will turn around to open doors for others, build networks, share knowledge, and help newcomers avoid detours. Researchers summarize this type of action as "structural agency" — not just adapting to the existing environment, but trying to make the environment itself a little better. When more people can get information, opportunities, trusted feedback and more inclusive participation methods, supportive relationships will gradually evolve from occasional kindness between individuals to more stable environmental conditions.
Giving back can be small and very specific. It can be a bounded experience sharing, an introduction to someone trustworthy, a frank and restrained piece of feedback; it can also be, as a team leader, reserving more accessible positions for people in different situations in recruitment, collaboration and activity design.
This article is from the WeChat Official Account "HSG Collective" (ID: Sequoiacap), written by Hong Shan, published with authorization from 36Kr.